Evaluating existing platforms in terms of applicability to BioStrike, Herbert’s consolidated reflections

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The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming in 1928.[12] He showed that, if Penicillium rubens[13] were grown in the appropriate substrate, it would exude a substance with antibiotic properties, which he dubbed penicillin. This serendipitous observation began the modern era of antibiotic discovery.

http://www.slideshare.net/HamaNabaz/lab-6-isolation-of-antibiotic-producer-from-soil

Zone of Inhibition: It is a circular zone around a disc containing an antibiotic, for example, in which the growth of bacteria susceptible to the antibiotic is inhibited. Typically several million bacterial cells are spread on the agar plate, and if their growth is inhibited, a clear "zone of inhibition" is observed around the antibiotic impregnated disc. If the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic, a confluent "lawn" of growth (opaqueness) is observed. http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00531.htm

Problem

Centralized Antibiotic Discovery • Subsequent establishment of a meterable

pharmaceutical ponzi

10 Discoveries/Year

Solution

Decentralized Antibiotic Discovery • Crowdsourced citizen science

99 999 Discoveries/Year

figshare

synbiota

figshare

• Science protocol • 1. uploading images, • 2. commenting on sizes of inhibition zones • Severely limited

• Crowdsourced Annotations • Nonexistent in terms of massive public access and hence participation • You cannot annotate on top of the image

• Open Data Publishing / Citations • Image authorship possible

• Open API • Nonexistent at this point, current version (figshare profile) functions merely as

a marketing linkback to figshare itself • Even if you decide to use figshare as a repository for images, pulling the

images out through the API is possible but then you still have to create your own code for crowd participation features such as collective tagging and liking

synbiota

• Science protocol • Lab Book sharing • Only two categories useful: external references and internal

protocols/notes

• Crowdsourced Annotations • Nonexistent • Complete data management? Storing, browsing and examining

images isn’t done intuitively

• Open Data Publishing / Citations • Only possible for gene sequences

• Open API • Possible to export gene sequences data in an organized fashion

only

Figshare + Synbiota

• Both have hallmarks of Web 2.0 usability • HTML5, within browser operation

• Low barriers to entry but not suited for the instrumental and crowdsourcing purposes of BioStrike

• Understand that the core medium communicated are images and the core activity being identifying through visual confirmation the size of inhibition zones

• Instrumental unsuitability of synbiota: does not facilitate decentralized uploading and viewing of images

• Instrumental unsuitability of figshare: No tag annotating feature

• Crowdsourcing is about many-to-many interaction • Projects are organized around the barrier of groups, not very fluid

and inconvenient

Omero

• Science protocol • 1. uploading images, • 2. annotating on sizes of inhibition zones

• Crowdsourced Annotations • Possible but too unwieldy for convenient, decentralized and

collective operation • Application is too specialized for the specific purpose of

BioStrike

• Open Data Publishing / Citations • Image authorship possible

• Open API • Possible but expectedly too many hoops to jump over

What is superior to data? Better data. API must facilitate data to be

repurposed for different uses.

Let’s prototype a Biostrike app!

Leveraging the Philosophy of Growth Hacking

1. Identify existing/emergent social behavior 2. Determine the social affordance that corresponds to the social behavior 3. Improve the user experience surrounding the social affordance 4. Growth hack to critical mass by exploiting the social behavior 5. Expand horizontally

Growth Hacking (how to make things viral) + Citizen Science

Central Goals

Mass Communication to propel Citizen Science with the fitness metric

Chance of Breakthroughs = f(traction)

Traction -> Critical Mass -> Stigmergic Social Momentum

“CrowdMedia’s premise is simple: crowdsourced social photos shared on Twitter or Instagram are, more and more, becoming critically important to

news coverage. So the startup offers an automated platform that gets those pictures out of social media

and onto the front page of major news organizations, with rights cleared and money in the

owner’s pocket … all within minutes.”

CrowdMedia sells everyone’s newsworthy Twitter pics — and could just change journalism forever

High gratification: easily obtained social rewards

from existing social communes

You’d Be Surprised By What Really Motivates Users

Features of a Biostrike App

• Tap into existing social behavior • Twitter: Personas, achievement unlocked sharing, agar plate image

sharing

• Secondary Crowdsourcing • Fulfills social validation and rewarding + verification of good samples • Users must be able to annotate tags on top of images

• Stupidly Convenient to use: • Sign up through Twitter account • Annotate tags on images • Rate IS (inhibition size) rank from 1-10 • Provide metadata about an image: geotags and local information

• Crowdrank cancels out the noise • Aggregated big data principle: although there may be inconsistencies

when images are captured from the camera, rely on the principle crowd wisdom as a reliable signal will chime through the noise

• Promote Intergroup competition

Intergroup Competition, Stakeholder Involvement

• Pokemon-type characters to be designed for aggregate IS ranks, with different elements depending on locale found

• West: Water; Central: Fire; East: Nature; North: Wind; South: Psychic • Legendary Scymons: ranks 9-10

• Involve schools • Corollary: Young Scientist Awards with Young Civic Scientist • Allow CIP hours to be spent on civic science hours; breakthroughs give

mass social recognition on Young Civic Scientist portal + complete waiver of CIP hours left

• Banding of users • Competition between classes, then competition between schools • Allow a Special 4-6 Hobby Group that if successful will be granted Gym

Trainer Boss positions, just like the Pokemon games • Organize grand tournament events